Halloween in NYC: Finding a way through the darkness

Updated 7:19 pm, Thursday, November 1, 2012

The pitch black streets of Lower Manhattan were dangerous to drive on Wednesday night. Here's one intersection that I photographed on my cab trip up to Midtown.

The pitch black streets of Lower Manhattan were dangerous to drive on Wednesday night. Here's one intersection that I photographed on my cab trip up to Midtown.

Photo: Nolan Hicks, San Antonio Express-News

Halloween in NYC: Finding a way through the darkness

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NEW YORK — Approaching Lower Manhattan on the Brooklyn Bridge Wednesday evening, it was impossible to overstate how disconcerting it was to see half of Manhattan's famous skyline, dark.

Hulking towers of glass and steel — symbols of economic might on any regular day — sat lifeless.

The darkness made the situation dangerous, though not for the reasons that the imagination might conjure: no looters, running gun battles, rioters, or anything of the sort.

Just like Tuesday afternoon, Lower Manhattan was eerily quiet Wednesday evening. The danger came from something much more basic and much less sexy: no power means no stop lights, and no stop lights means the streets become a free-for-all.

A friend compared it to a real life version of the classic Atari game, Frogger, where the goal is to get the frog across several lanes of traffic without getting run over. Except, in this case, the streets are almost pitch black and you're inside of a taxi. Instead of stopping at intersections where lights are out, cab drivers seemed to barrel though them with only a cursory tapping of the brakes.

Things got so bad Wednesday night that the MTA announced bus service wouldn't venture below 23rd Street for the rest of the evening because of safety concerns.

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My cab ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan was a testament to the recklessness. At one point, we were nearly T-boned by an SUV. Neither vehicle bothered to actually stop and clear the intersection.

Above 34th Street (which seems more like 30th Street on the West side and 38th Street on the East Side), life seemed impossibly normal. The lights were on, the water was running, cell service was working, businesses were largely open, and the streets were crowded with cars and pedestrians. The only immediate reminders of the disaster that has seized much of the surrounding area that night — the devastation in New Jersey and Long Island, the powerlessness of Lower Manhattan — were the electronic signs above the subways announcing the system's closure and worse-than-usual traffic.

In Midtown, on Halloween night, roughly 30 blocks above the darkness, the show went on.

One party in the bar atop of the Empire Hotel featured costumed party-goers, dancing to a throbbing beat. Some people in business attire, which they had tried to make more casual, were also at the bar: some trying to get a drink, others trying to join the fun.

Three of us had gone up in the hope that we could get a good view of crane dangling above West 57th Street since Monday. Minutes before and a dozen stories below, the bouncer guarding the elevator said there was a great view of a crane, but he had no idea if it was the crane. It wasn't. We left to find a bar where we thought we might afford a drink or two.

We found it sometime later (by that point our group had been reduced to two) on Second Avenue near 52nd Street. The crowded bar was loud, boisterous, a bit bro-tastic, and wouldn't have seemed out of place in Any City U.S.A. A few large TV's lined the wall above the shelves of booze showed the local TV station's coverage of Sandy's aftermath. We stood. We talked. We had a drink. And then we left.

My friend planned to take an incredibly circuitous journey back to his place on the Lower East Side, via Queens and Williamsburg. I couldn't accurately describe my path. My knowledge of the city's geography isn't good enough.

I asked him why he would take the really long way his apartment and, in sum, he replied: What's the hurry to get there if you're just going home to darkness?